Books of.** In several manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate, as well as in all the printed editions anterior to the decree of the Council of Trent, and in many since that period, there will be found four books following each other, entitled the 1st, 2d, 3d, and 4th Books of Ezra. The first two are the canonical Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, the 3d and 4th form the subject of the present article. They are the same which are called 1st and 2d Esdras in the English authorized version of the Apocrypha.

The Third Book of Ezra is found in all the manuscripts of the Seventy, where it is called the first book, and precedes the second or canonical Ezra, which, in this version, includes the Book of Nehemiah. It contains 109 κεφάλαια. It is little more than a recapitulation of the history contained in the canonical Ezra, interspersed with some remarkable interpolations, the chief of which are chap. i., taken from 2 Chron. xxxv. xxxvi., part of the last chapter, from Nehem. viii., and the narration of the themes or sentences of Zorobabel and the two other young men of Darius's body-guard (3 Esd. iii. 4). The book is more properly a version than an original work. The style is acknowledged to be elegant, and not unlike that of Symmachus. This book was made use of by Josephus, who cites it largely in his Antiquities, but nothing further has been ascertained respecting the age either of the original or the translation. It is cited by Clemens Alexandrinus (Stromata, i.), the author of the Imperfect Work on Matt. (Hom. i.), Athanasius (Orat. iii. cont. Arianos), and by Cyprian (Epist. ad Pompelium). From the circumstance of Jerome's having declined to translate the third and fourth Books of Ezra, they are (with the exception of the Book of Job and the Psalms) the only portions either of the canonical or apocryphal writings of the Old Testament which have been preserved to us entire in the old Latin translation.

This book does not appear to have been included in the catalogue of any council, nor has any portion of it been read in the offices of the church. Having been rejected as apocryphal by the Council of Trent, it has been removed, together with the fourth book, in the Sixtine and Clementine editions of the Vulgate, to the end of the volume, with the observation that they are thus retained in order to "preserve from being altogether lost books which had been sometimes cited by some of the holy fathers."

The Fourth Book of Ezra is quite of a different character from the third, and it has been even doubted whether it more properly belongs to the Apocrypha of the Old or the New Testament, but the circumstance of the author's personating the celebrated scribe of that name has been supposed to have led to its obtaining a place in the former. It consists of a number of similitudes or visions, resembling in some passages the Apocalypse. The descriptions are acknowledged to be sometimes most spirited and striking, occasionally rising to great sublimity of thought, energy of conception, and elegance of expression (Lee's Epatolary Discourse; Laurence's Ethiopic Version of Ezra). This would probably be still more apparent had we the book in the original, for it seems highly probable that this, as well as the former book, is a translation from the Hebrew or Chaldee (Morini Exercit. Bibl. lib. ii. p. 225; Fabricii Cod. Pseud. V. T. iii. 189). But neither this nor the Greek version, which was known to Clemens Alexandrinus in the second century (Stromata, iii.), are any longer in existence, and the book was supposed to have been preserved only in the old Latin Ante-Hieronymian Version, until the middle of the seventeenth century, when an Arabic version was discovered in the Bodleian Library by Mr Gregory, a translation of which, by Simon Ockley, the Arabic professor at Cambridge, was published in 1711 by Mr William Whiston (Primitive Christianity, vol. iv.) Subsequently an Ethiopic version, which, although known to Ludolf, was concealed from the world, was published for the first time, accompanied by a Latin and English translation, by the late Archbishop Laurence, in 1820. The book is ascribed to the prophet Ezra by Clemens Alexandrinus (Strom. b. iii.), who looked upon it as canonical and divine, as did Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Ambrose, who has made several quotations from this "prophet," as he also styles him (Sixtus Senensis, Biblioth. Sanct.), and among others, one which no longer exists in the Latin, but is found both in the Arabic and Ethiopic (Laurence's Ezra). Jahn observes that the "Catholics have made many martyrs on its authority" (Heb. Commonwealth, b. v.). Pico de Mirandula considered this book as divinely inspired, and Gaspar Zamora placed it in his Concordance between Nehemiah and Maccabees. Among modern writers, Whiston (Authentic Records), and others both before and since his time, have considered this book as an inspired composition, and as the genuine pre- duction of Ezra. (See Prophecy that hath lain hid above these 2000 years; Middle State of the Souls departed; the Prophecies of the Second Book of Esdras, by Sir John Florer.)

Jahn supposes the author of the Fourth Book of Ezra to have been a Jew educated in Chaldea, who borrowed his style from Daniel, and who, having become a Christian, still retained his reverence for Cabalistic traditions. He places him in the first or early in the second century (see also Vogel's Commentatio de quarto lib. Esdras, Altorf, 1795). Archbishop Laurence, on the other hand (ut supra), conceives that the author was a Jew who never changed his creed, and endeavours to destroy the two main arguments in favour of the work having emanated from a Christian: one of these is founded on the remarkable fact that the author speaks of Jesus by name (chap. vii. 23), the other on the circumstance of his being plainly conversant with the Christian Scriptures. As to the former, Dr Laurence appeals to the Ethiopic version, where the text is (not my Son Jesus, but) "my Messiah" shall be revealed, which is confirmed by the Arabic reading, my Son Messiah. The archbishop considers these texts both in the Latin and Arabic to be interpolations or explanatory glosses. The argument derived from the author's acquaintance with the Christian Scriptures is principally founded on the first two chapters, which are wanting in both the Arabic and Ethiopic versions, and in most manuscripts of the Latin are placed at the beginning of the Third Book of Ezra, or at the end of Nehemiah, where they form a distinct book. The last two chapters are equally wanting in these versions, and in most Latin manuscripts form a fifth book, or are otherwise clearly distinguished from the former part of the book. This fifth book is in some manuscripts divided into seven chapters, and the whole of the fourth into thirty-nine. The division into two chapters is erroneously ascribed by Dr Frank Lee to Robert Stephen, for the same division is found in the Editio Princeps by Fust and Schoeffer, printed in 1462, where also the last two chapters, as well as the first two, are incorporated into the rest of the book, and have so continued in all subsequent editions. Dr Laurence concludes from other internal grounds, that the book was written before the Christian era, after the death of Marc Antony, and before the accession of Augustus, or between the 28th and 25th year before Christ.

Dr Lee is strongly of opinion that the author of this book was contemporary with the author of the Book of Enoch, or rather that both these books were written by one and the same author. It does not appear that Josephus was aware of its existence.